Annals of family medicine
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Annals of family medicine · Mar 2007
Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative StudyPatient education on prostate cancer screening and involvement in decision making.
Many clinicians lack resources to engage patients in shared decision making for prostate cancer screening. We sought to evaluate whether previsit educational decision aids facilitate shared decision making. ⋯ Patients in the decision aid groups were more informed and more engaged in the screening decision than their control counterparts. Exposure did not promote shared decision-making control, however. Whether shared decision making is the ideal model and how to measure its occurrence are subjects for further research.
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Performance measurement has become one of the foundations of current efforts to improve health care quality and has successfully increased compliance with practice guidelines in many settings. Despite the successes of performance measurement, many physicians remain apprehensive about its use because performance measurement "gets in the way of" delivering good care. There are several reasons clinicians might feel this way. ⋯ Performance measures play an important role in improving health care quality and will undoubtedly continue to do so; however, they are only one part of the solution to improving health care quality. Good performance is not necessarily good care, and pressure to improve performance can come at the sacrifice of good care. In its current state, performance measurement is better suited to improving measured care than improving the care of individual patients.